Software developers, IT Staff, and Engineers, have this failing in common: They tend to think that all problems are technical problems, things that require a larger and more well funded IT department to solve. Whatever the problem is, we can solve it, we just need more2 people/money/tools/toys.
In trying to communicate what you feel the problem is, you would be best served by keeping these two things in mind:
(1) OPPORTUNITY KNOCKS: Effective criticisms should state the problem clearly, or state that there is an "opportunity to do a better job than we are doing right now", if that's how you have to put it. Whatever you do, avoid pointless involvement of negative emotions. Assigning blame on a person or a part of a company, will doom your idea forever. You should frame the problem in such a way that it can be solved without anyone having to admit any wrongdoing or failure on their part. In one book on consulting that I read, the author suggests that a 10% improvement can be promised, without anyone losing face. It then becomes your job to make sure that if you ever make an improvement that improves more than that, you make sure that this is never noticed.
(2) LEARN THE LANGUAGE: You need to know someone in the management team that speaks your language (unlikely, indeed), or that you have senior technical people, who also speak management language, communicate on behalf of the IT people. Because larger meetings are useless at best, destructive at worst, solve problems with the smallest possible groups, and do your background research one on one wherever possible. Meetings grow increasingly counter-productive, as the number of people in the meeting grows. Any more than eight people, and it's not a meeting at all, it's a dog and pony show. Two people means two axes of communication. Three people means six axes of communication. Five people means 20 axes of communication. If you want to see this in action, draw a meeting table, and the people around the table, then draw a line from every person, to every other person in one direction, and another line the other direction. Those are the lines of communication. One key person, most likely a senior technical person, or even a senior management person with excellent technical skills, needs to be the communications gatekeeper between the technical/engineering/IT staff (whatever discipline) and the management. I have had excellent managers who have not lost their technical chops, someone who still remembers what it's like to be in the IT trenches. That kind of person, a bi-lingual bi-cultural person, is capable of dealing with both worlds, as management people know and respect them, and technical people know and respect them. These people can move with agility between management and IT language and ideas, and can arbitrate between the worlds. A wise IT staffer, and a wise manager, will identify these people, and co-operate with these gatekeepers.
Just thought I'd get that off my chest. I'm not Indian, I'm a plain boring old white person, but I have really fallen hard for Bollywood movies. Aishwarya Rai is such a babe. As is Vasundara Das (from Monsoon Wedding).
My first real camera was a Canon AE-1, I upgraded to a Canon T-70 later, but I ended up using the AE-1 more still. The aesthetic experience of the AE-1, the feel of it in my hand, the design of the controls, the ability to be fully manual, the depth of field preview, the odly beautiful completely rugged build of it, all that.
My digital camera sucks. But it's so convenient not having to have your film processed that I hardly use my camera anymore. For snapshots/family photography, digital is the way to go. For art, do what suits your artistic fancy. My dad just bought a Nikon D-100, which is beautiful, but ooh wee, it's a lot of coin.
I am not a raving Dell fan, but for x86 boxen, I recommend Dell to any business that doesn't have a dedicated IT staff. Why? Because at least their business-line of machines comes with decent support. I heartily concur with the other people who have pointed out that home users don't get anything like that level of support. But think about it. The home market is all about cut-throat pricing. Consumers want 7.0 Gigahertz Pentium Sevens for $299.99, with a 24" flat panel TFT. Something's gotta give. Got it? Thus the evil of whitebox clones, which are a bad idea for anyone who is not a techie. I feel bad for my relatives, who own crappy clones. No I don't give out much free tech support, but I do try to be human about it. When someone is obviously suffering, and it would take me a minute to help them, I help them. Wouldn't you all? I got trapped into the never ending spiral of supporting the entire extended family when they had problems with their clones, and I ended up telling them to give up and go Mac, or get a Dell.
For anyone with the slightest interest in leaving the x86 PC world, I urged them to go Mac. They would end up spending more money up front on their stuff, and they would have fewer software choices, but hopefully, they basic system would just plain work. I know enough about Macs to know they have problems too, some of which require extreme black vodoo to unravel. So they aren't perfect. And neither is Dell. But at least Dell's latest round of black boxen are reasonably well put together, fast, and price-competitive in the business market. When I have something dead, I phone them, and they send along replacements. I tend to be forceful, factual, and directive (giving orders, and making strong suggestions) rather than sitting back and telling tech-support to figure it out for me. That works for me. But my family members who own dells who are not as technically savvy, Dell tech support gets their problems solved too. Frankly, I am glad Dell does this ugly thankless task for me, and I am willing to tell people to buy a Dell, so they can handle it. It's customer service people, and it's an ugly world. Phone support techs, you who are about to go insane trying to help people who have a hard time plugging things in, and turning them on, I salute you.
Click Here for the reason this distribution is called MEPIS.
I just gotta say, that's the most obscure, and possibly one of the dumbest distro names ever. Okay, Yggdrasil was slightly more obscure, but in a cool way.
Without transparency and honesty, how can there be any security at all? If Debian people didn't report it, i'd be more concerned. Now that they've reported it, we can be sure that the damage can be controlled, minimized, and prevented in the future.
Perhaps the password compromise thread can be minimized by strictly limiting the number of people permitted to know the root password of each server. Knowing Debian project, they have already thought of that, and more besides.
Slashdot Mirror
Software developers, IT Staff, and Engineers, have this failing in common: They tend to think that all problems are technical problems, things that require a larger and more well funded IT department to solve. Whatever the problem is, we can solve it, we just need more2 people/money/tools/toys.
In trying to communicate what you feel the problem is, you would be best served by keeping these two things in mind:
(1) OPPORTUNITY KNOCKS: Effective criticisms should state the problem clearly, or state that there is an "opportunity to do a better job than we are doing right now", if that's how you have to put it. Whatever you do, avoid pointless involvement of negative emotions. Assigning blame on a person or a part of a company, will doom your idea forever. You should frame the problem in such a way that it can be solved without anyone having to admit any wrongdoing or failure on their part. In one book on consulting that I read, the author suggests that a 10% improvement can be promised, without anyone losing face. It then becomes your job to make sure that if you ever make an improvement that improves more than that, you make sure that this is never noticed.
(2) LEARN THE LANGUAGE: You need to know someone in the management team that speaks your language (unlikely, indeed), or that you have senior technical people, who also speak management language, communicate on behalf of the IT people.
Because larger meetings are useless at best, destructive at worst, solve problems with the smallest possible groups, and do your background research one on one wherever possible. Meetings grow increasingly counter-productive, as the number of people in the meeting grows. Any more than eight people, and it's not a meeting at all, it's a dog and pony show. Two people means two axes of communication. Three people means six axes of communication. Five people means 20 axes of communication. If you want to see this in action, draw a meeting table, and the people around the table, then draw a line from every person, to every other person in one direction, and another line the other direction. Those are the lines of communication. One key person, most likely a senior technical person, or even a senior management person with excellent technical skills, needs to be the communications gatekeeper between the technical/engineering/IT staff (whatever discipline) and the management. I have had excellent managers who have not lost their technical chops, someone who still remembers what it's like to be in the IT trenches. That kind of person, a bi-lingual bi-cultural person, is capable of dealing with both worlds, as management people know and respect them, and technical people know and respect them. These people can move with agility between management and IT language and ideas, and can arbitrate between the worlds. A wise IT staffer, and a wise manager, will identify these people, and co-operate with these gatekeepers.
W.Postma
Just thought I'd get that off my chest. I'm not Indian, I'm a plain boring old white person, but I have really fallen hard for Bollywood movies. Aishwarya Rai is such a babe. As is Vasundara Das (from Monsoon Wedding).
Kind Regards From Toronto Canada,
W. Postma
My first real camera was a Canon AE-1, I upgraded to a Canon T-70 later, but I ended up using the AE-1 more still. The aesthetic experience of the AE-1, the feel of it in my hand, the design of the controls, the ability to be fully manual, the depth of field preview, the odly beautiful completely rugged build of it, all that.
My digital camera sucks. But it's so convenient not having to have your film processed that I hardly use my camera anymore. For snapshots/family photography, digital is the way to go. For art, do what suits your artistic fancy. My dad just bought a Nikon D-100, which is beautiful, but ooh wee, it's a lot of coin.
Warren/Franciscan
I am not a raving Dell fan, but for x86 boxen, I recommend Dell to any business that doesn't have a dedicated IT staff. Why? Because at least their business-line of machines comes with decent support. I heartily concur with the other people who have pointed out that home users don't get anything like that level of support. But think about it. The home market is all about cut-throat pricing. Consumers want 7.0 Gigahertz Pentium Sevens for $299.99, with a 24" flat panel TFT. Something's gotta give. Got it? Thus the evil of whitebox clones, which are a bad idea for anyone who is not a techie. I feel bad for my relatives, who own crappy clones. No I don't give out much free tech support, but I do try to be human about it. When someone is obviously suffering, and it would take me a minute to help them, I help them. Wouldn't you all? I got trapped into the never ending spiral of supporting the entire extended family when they had problems with their clones, and I ended up telling them to give up and go Mac, or get a Dell.
For anyone with the slightest interest in leaving the x86 PC world, I urged them to go Mac. They would end up spending more money up front on their stuff, and they would have fewer software choices, but hopefully, they basic system would just plain work. I know enough about Macs to know they have problems too, some of which require extreme black vodoo to unravel. So they aren't perfect. And neither is Dell. But at least Dell's latest round of black boxen are reasonably well put together, fast, and price-competitive in the business market. When I have something dead, I phone them, and they send along replacements. I tend to be forceful, factual, and directive (giving orders, and making strong suggestions) rather than sitting back and telling tech-support to figure it out for me. That works for me. But my family members who own dells who are not as technically savvy, Dell tech support gets their problems solved too. Frankly, I am glad Dell does this ugly thankless task for me, and I am willing to tell people to buy a Dell, so they can handle it. It's customer service people, and it's an ugly world. Phone support techs, you who are about to go insane trying to help people who have a hard time plugging things in, and turning them on, I salute you.
WPostma/Franciscan
Click Here for the reason this distribution is called MEPIS.
I just gotta say, that's the most obscure, and possibly one of the dumbest distro names ever. Okay, Yggdrasil was slightly more obscure, but in a cool way.
Regards, WPostma/Franciscan
Without transparency and honesty, how can there be any security at all? If Debian people didn't report it, i'd be more concerned. Now that they've reported it, we can be sure that the damage can be controlled, minimized, and prevented in the future.
Perhaps the password compromise thread can be minimized by strictly limiting the number of people permitted to know the root password of each server. Knowing Debian project, they have already thought of that, and more besides.
WPostma